Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communication systems and, more particularly, to managing loads on a wireless communication system.
Description of the Related Art
Congestion in wireless communication systems reduces the user quality of experience and increases the probability of dropped calls. A carrier of an eNodeB can become congested if too many instances of active user equipment are attempting to communicate with the eNodeB over the carrier. The wireless communication system may therefore load balance some of the active user equipment away from the heavily loaded carrier to a more lightly loaded carrier to reduce congestion on the heavily loaded carrier and thereby improve the quality of experience of the active user equipment. An eNodeB can monitor the load on a carrier and send requests to user equipment to measure the signal strength of other potential carriers if the load on the carrier exceeds a load threshold. In response to the request from the eNodeB, a user equipment enters the compressed measurement mode and suspends communication on its current carrier for a short time interval to measure signal strengths on potential target carriers. The user equipment may hand off to another carrier if the measured signal strength satisfies a handover criterion such as exceeding a handover threshold. The load thresholds are assigned to the eNodeBs statically and do not take account of the quality sensitivity of the load. Consequently, the eNodeB may have difficulty maintaining the quality of experience for some user equipment as different user equipment imposes different demands on the eNodeBs.